Long Road to Angelucci Recall

It didn’t take long for proponents of the balanced school calendar to declare their desire to unseat new member Kathleen Angelucci of Post 4—the venom flew during the public comments early in Thursday night’s board meeting.

Sandra Riedesel earned a roar from the crowd when she scoffed at Angelucci’s to the number of pro-balanced-calendar e-mails being “jacked up,” and Gina Ulicny drew cheers when she said some board members were elected not because of their support for one issue, but because “sometimes they were the only one running.”

Angelucci campaigned for the traditional calendar but was unopposed when she won the election Nov. 2 to represent Post 4, which covers the school districts for  and high schools.

But the backers of the balanced calendar shouldn’t expect immediate satisfaction against the board members to adopt a more traditional school calendar that begins Aug. 15.

The road to recall is a “long and complicated process,” said Janine Eveler, Cobb County’s elections director.

First, Georgia law grants new officeholders a 180-day grace period. That means Angelucci and fellow newcomers Tim Stultz of Post 2 and Scott Sweeney of Post 6, who joined board Chairwoman Alison Bartlett of Post 7 in forming the calendar majority, aren’t subject to recall for nearly five more months.

The three were sworn in Jan. 6, so they’re safe until July 5.

If tempers haven’t cooled before the summer swelter settles in, Angelucci’s foes can begin the recall process, Eveler said, but they face a significant legal hurdle.

Georgia law sets specific grounds for recall involving misconduct or malfeasance, and a candidate can challenge a recall in court for not meeting those standards, she said. “Generally speaking, conducting a vote in a meeting, as long as it’s done with proper notice, is not really grounds for a recall.”

But that legal standard doesn’t stand in the way until late in the process, which Eveler laid out:

• Submit an application to the Cobb Board of Elections & Registration with 100 signatures of adults who lived in Angelucci’s district in Kennesaw, Acworth and Northeast Cobb at the time of her election in November and still live there. Those 100 people become the sponsors of the recall, and if the Board of Elections verifies and accepts the application, they will receive a recall petition.
• Circulate the petition to gain the signatures of adults in Angelucci’s district equal to at least 30 percent of the registered voters in the district at the time of her election.
• Survive a court challenge to the recall petition.
• Defeat Angelucci in an election in which the choice is simple—she stays or she goes. A successful recall would result in another election being held to fill her seat.

In her time as elections director, Eveler has seen recall efforts in Cobb, but none has made it to Election Day.